Congratulations, your purchase of the Altera Nios II Development Kit - either the Stratix^® II FPGA Edition or the Cyclone^® II FPGA Edition, entitles you to a free copy of eCosCentric's eCosPro Starter Kit. The Starter Kit includes all the necessary tools, runtime code and documentation you need to develop royalty and license fee free embedded applications running on Altera's Nios II core.

Getting Started

To get started you must first register for the eCosPro Starter Kit by completing the online registration form. Your registered email address will then be used to send download instructions and a licensee file. The licensee file is used to unlock and install the downloaded Starter Kit for your use. Installation instructions are provided in the README.html file located in the root directory of the download. If you have any problems registering or downloading contact eCosCentric. Please note that no installation or other support is provided with the Starter Kit. If you require support see the Support and Upgrades section below.

Nios II eCosPro Starter Kit Contents

eCosPro Host Development Tools

• Complete industry standard GNU compiler toolset including C/C++ compiler, assembler, linker, and source level debugger
• Debugger support for Altera's USB Blaster^™ JTAG hardware (included with the Nios II Development Kits), as well as Ethernet and serial based connections
• Easy to use eCos RTOS graphical configuration tool
• Support for both Windows and Linux development environments

eCosPro Runtime Features

• Fully tested and quality assured distribution of the eCos RTOS and RedBoot bootloader
• Standard eCos HAL, kernel, ISO C and math libraries, memory based file systems, TCP/IP stack, POSIX compatibility layer, and many other runtime packages
• Nios II port of eCos covering timers, interrupts & exception handling, cache and other architectural aspects
• Nios II Stratix II and Cyclone II development board support, including on-board LAN91C111 Ethernet, RS232, and Flash device drivers

These are full versions of the tools and RTOS, they have not been restricted in either functionality or execution time. Complete source code is provided for all components. For in-depth technical details, please view the online eCosPro Nios II documentation.

Support and Upgrades

Your free copy of the eCosPro Starter Kit is provided "as-is" with no warranty or support. For commercial support and additional features, consider upgrading to a full eCosPro Developer's Kit. The Nios II eCosPro Developer's Kit upgrade includes the following features:

Support Services

• Incident Support: The Incident Support service ensures that any software defects your team identify are dealt with swiftly and effectively. This includes the generation of suitable code patches where appropriate.
• Advice Line: The Advice Line service puts your engineers directly in touch with our experts for specialist advice on any eCos related topic. The service provides confidential answers within a guaranteed response period.

Additional Functionality

• Nios II on-chip Triple-Speed Ethernet MegaCore device support
• Nios II on-chip Watchdog device support
• Eclipse/CDT GUI based eCos application development environment
• The C++ standard library
• Profiling and code coverage tools
• Memory allocation analysis and debugging tool
• MS-DOS^® compatible FAT filing system with long filename support
• JFFS2 Journalling Flash Filing System
• lwIP alternative small footprint networking stack
• Robust Boot Loader (RBL) package for in-field software upgrades

eCosPro functionality can also be further expanded with a range of optional middleware packages.

eCosCentric also offer a comprehensive range of services focused on supporting eCosPro based product development. These include training, consultancy, and custom engineering services.

Purchasing and Further Information

To purchase the eCosPro Developer's Kit upgrade, or to request further information about our products or services, please contact us.